Social networking platforms have long faced the difficult task of balancing the desire to promote freedom of expression with the need to prevent abuse and harassment on their sites. One of social media’s greatest challenges is to make platforms safe enough so users are not constantly bombarded with offensive content and threats (a recent Pew Research Center study reported that 40% of Internet users have experienced harassment), yet open enough to foster discussion of complex, and sometimes controversial, topics.

This past year, certain companies have made some noteworthy changes. Perhaps most notably, Twitter, long known for its relatively permissive stance regarding content regulation, introduced automatic filtering and stricter language in its policies regarding threatening language. Also, Reddit, long known as the “wild wild west” of the Internet, released a controversial new anti‑harassment policy and took unprecedented proactive steps to regulate content by shutting down some of the site’s more controversial forums.

According to some, such changes came as a result of several recent, highly publicized instances of targeted threat campaigns on such platforms, such as “Gamergate,” a campaign against female gaming journalists organized and perpetrated over Twitter, Reddit and other social media platforms. Below we summarize how some of the major social networking platforms are addressing these difficult issues.

Facebook

Facebook’s anti-harassment policy and community standards have remained relatively stable over time. However, in March 2015, Facebook released a redesign of its Community Standards page in order to better explain its policies and make it easier to navigate. This was largely a cosmetic change.

According to Monika Bickert, Facebook’s head of global policy management, “We’re just trying to explain what we do more clearly.”

The rules of conduct are now grouped into the following four categories:

“Protecting your intellectual property” encourages users to only post content to which they own the rights.

Instagram

After a series of highly publicized censorship battles, Instagram updated its community standards page in April 2015 to clarify its policies. These more-detailed standards for appropriate images posted to the site are aimed at curbing nudity, pornography and harassment.

According to Nicky Jackson Colaco, director of public policy, “In the old guidelines, we would say ‘don’t be mean.’ Now we’re actively saying you can’t harass people. The language is just stronger.”

The old guidelines comprised a relatively simple list of do’s and don’ts—for example, the policy regarding abuse and harassment fell under Don’t #5: “Don’t be rude.” As such, the new guidelines are much more fleshed out. The new guidelines clearly state, “By using Instagram, you agree to these guidelines and our Terms of Use. We’re committed to these guidelines and we hope you are too. Overstepping these boundaries may result in a disabled account.”

According to Jackson Colaco, there was no one incident that triggered Instagram’s decision. Rather, the changes were catalyzed by continuous user complaints and confusion regarding the lack of clarity in content regulation. In policing content, Instagram has always relied on users to flag inappropriate content rather than actively patrolling the site for offensive material.

The language of the new guidelines now details several explicit rules, including the following:

Nudity. Images of nudity and of an explicitly sexual nature are prohibited. However, Instagram makes an exception for “photos of post‑mastectomy scarring and women actively breastfeeding.”

Illegal activity. Offering sexual services, buying or selling drugs (as well as promoting recreational use) is prohibited. There is a zero-tolerance policy for sexual images of minors and revenge porn (including threats of posting revenge porn).

Twitter has made two major rounds of changes to its content regulation policies in the past year. These changes are especially salient given the fact that Twitter has previously been fairly permissive regarding content regulation.

In December 2014, Twitter announced a set of new tools to help users deal with harassment and unwanted messages. These tools allow users to more easily flag abuse and describe their reasons for blocking or reporting a Twitter account in more specific terms. While in the past Twitter had allowed users to report spam, the new tools allow users to report harassment, impersonations, self‑harm, suicide and, perhaps most interestingly, harassment on behalf of others.

Within “harassment,” Twitter allows the user to report multiple categories: “being disrespectful or offensive,” “harassing me” or “threatening violence or physical harm.” The new tools have also been designed to be more mobile-friendly.

Twitter also released a new blocked accounts page during this round of changes. This feature allows users to more easily manage the list of Twitter accounts they have blocked (rather than relying on third-party apps, as many did before). The company also changed how the blocking system operates. Before, blocked users could still tweet and respond to the blocker; they simply could not follow the blocker. Now, blocked accounts will not be able to view the profile of the blocker at all.

In April 2015, Twitter further cracked down on abuse and unveiled a new filter designed to automatically prevent users from seeing harassing and violent messages. For the first time, all users’ notifications will be filtered for abusive content. This change came shortly after an internal memo from CEO Dick Costolo leaked, in which he remarked, “We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform, and we’ve sucked at it for years.”

The new filter will be automatically turned on for all users and cannot be turned off. According to Shreyas Doshi, head of product management, “This feature takes into account a wide range of signals and context that frequently correlates with abuse including the age of the account itself, and the similarity of the Tweet to other content that our safety team has in the past independently determined to be abusive.”

Beyond the filter, Twitter also made two changes to its harassment policies. First, the rules against threatening language have been strengthened. While “direct, specific threats of violence against others” were always banned, that prohibition is now much broader and includes “threats of violence against others or promot[ing] violence against others.”

Second, users who breach the policies will now face heavier sanctions. Previously, the only options were to either ban an account completely or take no action (resulting in much of the threatening language not being sanctioned at all). Now, Twitter will begin to impose temporary suspensions for users who violate the rules but whose violation does not warrant a full ban.

Moreover, since Costolo’s statements, Twitter has tripled the size of its team handling abuse reports and added rules prohibiting revenge porn.

Reddit

In March 2015, Reddit prohibited the posting of several types of content, including anything copyrighted or confidential, violent personalized images and unauthorized photos or videos of nude or sexually excited subjects.

Two months later, Reddit unveiled a controversial new anti-harassment policy that represented a significant shift from Reddit’s long‑time reputation as an online free-for-all. The company announced that it was updating its policies to explicitly ban harassment against users. Some found this move surprising, given Reddit’s laissez-faire reputation and the wide range of subject matter and tone it had previously allowed to proliferate on its site (for example, Reddit only expressly banned sexually explicit content involving minors three years ago after much negative PR).

In a blog post titled “promote ideas, protect people,” Reddit announced it would be prohibiting “attacks and harassment of individuals” through the platform. According to Reddit’s former CEO Ellen Pao, “We’ve heard a lot of complaints and found that even our existing users were unhappy with the content on the site.”

In March 2015, Reddit also moved to ban the posting of nude photos without the subjects’ consent (i.e., revenge porn). In discussing the changes in content regulation, Alexis Ohanian, executive chairman, said, “Revenge porn didn’t exist in 2005. Smartphones didn’t really exist in 2005…we’re taking the standards we had 10 years ago and bringing them up to speed for 2015.” Interestingly, rather than actively policing the site, Reddit will rely on members to report offensive material to moderators.

Reddit’s new policy defines harassment as: “systematic and/or continued actions continued actions to torment or demean someone in a way that would make a reasonable person (1) conclude that Reddit is not a safe platform to express their ideas or participate in the conversation, or (2) fear for their safety or the safety of those around them.”

As a result of the new policies, Reddit permanently removed five subreddits (forums) from the site: two dedicated to fat-shaming, one to racism, one to transphobia and one to harassing members of a progressive website. Apart from the expected criticisms of censorship, some commentators have condemned Reddit for the seemingly random selection of these specific subreddits. Even though these subreddits have been removed, many other offensive subreddits remain, including a violently anti-black subreddit and one dedicated to suggestive pictures of minors.

Google

In June 2015, Google took a major step in the battle against revenge porn, a form of online harassment that involves publishing private, sexually explicit photos of someone without that person’s consent. Adding to the damage, such photos may appear in Google search results for the person’s name. Google has now announced that it will remove such images from search results when the subject of the photo requests it.

Amit Singhal, senior vice president of Google Search, stated, “This is a narrow and limited policy, similar to how we treat removal requests for other highly sensitive personal information, such as bank account numbers and signatures, that may surface in our search results.” Some have questioned, though, why it took so long for Google to treat private sexual information similarly to other private information.

As social media grows up and becomes firmly ensconced in the mainstream, it is not surprising to see the major players striving to make their platforms safer and more comfortable for the majority of users. It will be interesting, though, to watch as the industry continues to wrestle with the challenge of instituting these new standards without overly restricting the free flow of content and ideas that made social media so appealing in the first place.

Latest Posts

DISCLAIMER: Because of the generality of this update, the information provided herein may not be applicable in all situations and should not be acted upon without specific legal advice based on particular situations.

Morrison & Foerster LLP - Social Media on:

"My best business intelligence, in one easy email…"

*By using the service, you signify your acceptance of JD Supra's Privacy Policy.

- hide

JD Supra Privacy Policy

Updated: May 25, 2018:

JD Supra is a legal publishing service that connects experts and their content with broader audiences of professionals, journalists and associations.

This Privacy Policy describes how JD Supra, LLC ("JD Supra" or "we," "us," or "our") collects, uses and shares personal data collected from visitors to our website (located at www.jdsupra.com) (our "Website") who view only publicly-available content as well as subscribers to our services (such as our email digests or author tools)(our "Services"). By using our Website and registering for one of our Services, you are agreeing to the terms of this Privacy Policy.

Please note that if you subscribe to one of our Services, you can make choices about how we collect, use and share your information through our Privacy Center under the "My Account" dashboard (available if you are logged into your JD Supra account).

Collection of Information

Registration Information. When you register with JD Supra for our Website and Services, either as an author or as a subscriber, you will be asked to provide identifying information to create your JD Supra account ("Registration Data"), such as your:

Email

First Name

Last Name

Company Name

Company Industry

Title

Country

Other Information: We also collect other information you may voluntarily provide. This may include content you provide for publication. We may also receive your communications with others through our Website and Services (such as contacting an author through our Website) or communications directly with us (such as through email, feedback or other forms or social media). If you are a subscribed user, we will also collect your user preferences, such as the types of articles you would like to read.

Information from third parties (such as, from your employer or LinkedIn): We may also receive information about you from third party sources. For example, your employer may provide your information to us, such as in connection with an article submitted by your employer for publication. If you choose to use LinkedIn to subscribe to our Website and Services, we also collect information related to your LinkedIn account and profile.

Your interactions with our Website and Services: As is true of most websites, we gather certain information automatically. This information includes IP addresses, browser type, Internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, operating system, date/time stamp and clickstream data. We use this information to analyze trends, to administer the Website and our Services, to improve the content and performance of our Website and Services, and to track users' movements around the site. We may also link this automatically-collected data to personal information, for example, to inform authors about who has read their articles. Some of this data is collected through information sent by your web browser. We also use cookies and other tracking technologies to collect this information. To learn more about cookies and other tracking technologies that JD Supra may use on our Website and Services please see our "Cookies Guide" page.

How do we use this information?

We use the information and data we collect principally in order to provide our Website and Services. More specifically, we may use your personal information to:

Operate our Website and Services and publish content;

Distribute content to you in accordance with your preferences as well as to provide other notifications to you (for example, updates about our policies and terms);

Measure readership and usage of the Website and Services;

Communicate with you regarding your questions and requests;

Authenticate users and to provide for the safety and security of our Website and Services;

Conduct research and similar activities to improve our Website and Services; and

Comply with our legal and regulatory responsibilities and to enforce our rights.

How is your information shared?

Content and other public information (such as an author profile) is shared on our Website and Services, including via email digests and social media feeds, and is accessible to the general public.

If you choose to use our Website and Services to communicate directly with a company or individual, such communication may be shared accordingly.

Readership information is provided to publishing law firms and authors of content to give them insight into their readership and to help them to improve their content.

Our Website may offer you the opportunity to share information through our Website, such as through Facebook's "Like" or Twitter's "Tweet" button. We offer this functionality to help generate interest in our Website and content and to permit you to recommend content to your contacts. You should be aware that sharing through such functionality may result in information being collected by the applicable social media network and possibly being made publicly available (for example, through a search engine). Any such information collection would be subject to such third party social media network's privacy policy.

Your information may also be shared to parties who support our business, such as professional advisors as well as web-hosting providers, analytics providers and other information technology providers.

Any court, governmental authority, law enforcement agency or other third party where we believe disclosure is necessary to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation, or otherwise to protect our rights, the rights of any third party or individuals' personal safety, or to detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or safety issues.

To our affiliated entities and in connection with the sale, assignment or other transfer of our company or our business.

How We Protect Your Information

JD Supra takes reasonable and appropriate precautions to insure that user information is protected from loss, misuse and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration and destruction. We restrict access to user information to those individuals who reasonably need access to perform their job functions, such as our third party email service, customer service personnel and technical staff. You should keep in mind that no Internet transmission is ever 100% secure or error-free. Where you use log-in credentials (usernames, passwords) on our Website, please remember that it is your responsibility to safeguard them. If you believe that your log-in credentials have been compromised, please contact us at privacy@jdsupra.com.

Children's Information

Our Website and Services are not directed at children under the age of 16 and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 16 through our Website and/or Services. If you have reason to believe that a child under the age of 16 has provided personal information to us, please contact us, and we will endeavor to delete that information from our databases.

Links to Other Websites

Our Website and Services may contain links to other websites. The operators of such other websites may collect information about you, including through cookies or other technologies. If you are using our Website or Services and click a link to another site, you will leave our Website and this Policy will not apply to your use of and activity on those other sites. We encourage you to read the legal notices posted on those sites, including their privacy policies. We are not responsible for the data collection and use practices of such other sites. This Policy applies solely to the information collected in connection with your use of our Website and Services and does not apply to any practices conducted offline or in connection with any other websites.

Information for EU and Swiss Residents

JD Supra's principal place of business is in the United States. By subscribing to our website, you expressly consent to your information being processed in the United States.

Our Legal Basis for Processing: Generally, we rely on our legitimate interests in order to process your personal information. For example, we rely on this legal ground if we use your personal information to manage your Registration Data and administer our relationship with you; to deliver our Website and Services; understand and improve our Website and Services; report reader analytics to our authors; to personalize your experience on our Website and Services; and where necessary to protect or defend our or another's rights or property, or to detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security, safety or privacy issues. Please see Article 6(1)(f) of the E.U. General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR") In addition, there may be other situations where other grounds for processing may exist, such as where processing is a result of legal requirements (GDPR Article 6(1)(c)) or for reasons of public interest (GDPR Article 6(1)(e)). Please see the "Your Rights" section of this Privacy Policy immediately below for more information about how you may request that we limit or refrain from processing your personal information.

Your Rights

Right of Access/Portability: You can ask to review details about the information we hold about you and how that information has been used and disclosed. Note that we may request to verify your identification before fulfilling your request. You can also request that your personal information is provided to you in a commonly used electronic format so that you can share it with other organizations.

Right to Correct Information: You may ask that we make corrections to any information we hold, if you believe such correction to be necessary.

Right to Restrict Our Processing or Erasure of Information: You also have the right in certain circumstances to ask us to restrict processing of your personal information or to erase your personal information. Where you have consented to our use of your personal information, you can withdraw your consent at any time.

You can make a request to exercise any of these rights by emailing us at privacy@jdsupra.com or by writing to us at:

You can also manage your profile and subscriptions through our Privacy Center under the "My Account" dashboard.

We will make all practical efforts to respect your wishes. There may be times, however, where we are not able to fulfill your request, for example, if applicable law prohibits our compliance. Please note that JD Supra does not use "automatic decision making" or "profiling" as those terms are defined in the GDPR.

Timeframe for retaining your personal information: We will retain your personal information in a form that identifies you only for as long as it serves the purpose(s) for which it was initially collected as stated in this Privacy Policy, or subsequently authorized. We may continue processing your personal information for longer periods, but only for the time and to the extent such processing reasonably serves the purposes of archiving in the public interest, journalism, literature and art, scientific or historical research and statistical analysis, and subject to the protection of this Privacy Policy. For example, if you are an author, your personal information may continue to be published in connection with your article indefinitely. When we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process your personal information, we will either delete or anonymize it, or, if this is not possible (for example, because your personal information has been stored in backup archives), then we will securely store your personal information and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible.

Onward Transfer to Third Parties: As noted in the "How We Share Your Data" Section above, JD Supra may share your information with third parties. When JD Supra discloses your personal information to third parties, we have ensured that such third parties have either certified under the EU-U.S. or Swiss Privacy Shield Framework and will process all personal data received from EU member states/Switzerland in reliance on the applicable Privacy Shield Framework or that they have been subjected to strict contractual provisions in their contract with us to guarantee an adequate level of data protection for your data.

California Privacy Rights

Pursuant to Section 1798.83 of the California Civil Code, our customers who are California residents have the right to request certain information regarding our disclosure of personal information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes.

You can make a request for this information by emailing us at privacy@jdsupra.com or by writing to us at:

Some browsers have incorporated a Do Not Track (DNT) feature. These features, when turned on, send a signal that you prefer that the website you are visiting not collect and use data regarding your online searching and browsing activities. As there is not yet a common understanding on how to interpret the DNT signal, we currently do not respond to DNT signals on our site.

Access/Correct/Update/Delete Personal Information

For non-EU/Swiss residents, if you would like to know what personal information we have about you, you can send an e-mail to privacy@jdsupra.com. We will be in contact with you (by mail or otherwise) to verify your identity and provide you the information you request. We will respond within 30 days to your request for access to your personal information. In some cases, we may not be able to remove your personal information, in which case we will let you know if we are unable to do so and why. If you would like to correct or update your personal information, you can manage your profile and subscriptions through our Privacy Center under the "My Account" dashboard. If you would like to delete your account or remove your information from our Website and Services, send an e-mail to privacy@jdsupra.com.

Changes in Our Privacy Policy

We reserve the right to change this Privacy Policy at any time. Please refer to the date at the top of this page to determine when this Policy was last revised. Any changes to our Privacy Policy will become effective upon posting of the revised policy on the Website. By continuing to use our Website and Services following such changes, you will be deemed to have agreed to such changes.

Contacting JD Supra

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, the practices of this site, your dealings with our Website or Services, or if you would like to change any of the information you have provided to us, please contact us at: privacy@jdsupra.com.

JD Supra Cookie Guide

As with many websites, JD Supra's website (located at www.jdsupra.com) (our "Website") and our services (such as our email article digests)(our "Services") use a standard technology called a "cookie" and other similar technologies (such as, pixels and web beacons), which are small data files that are transferred to your computer when you use our Website and Services. These technologies automatically identify your browser whenever you interact with our Website and Services.

How We Use Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies

We use cookies and other tracking technologies to:

Improve the user experience on our Website and Services;

Store the authorization token that users receive when they login to the private areas of our Website. This token is specific to a user's login session and requires a valid username and password to obtain. It is required to access the user's profile information, subscriptions, and analytics;

Track anonymous site usage; and

Permit connectivity with social media networks to permit content sharing.

There are different types of cookies and other technologies used our Website, notably:

"Session cookies" - These cookies only last as long as your online session, and disappear from your computer or device when you close your browser (like Internet Explorer, Google Chrome or Safari).

"Persistent cookies" - These cookies stay on your computer or device after your browser has been closed and last for a time specified in the cookie. We use persistent cookies when we need to know who you are for more than one browsing session. For example, we use them to remember your preferences for the next time you visit.

"Web Beacons/Pixels" - Some of our web pages and emails may also contain small electronic images known as web beacons, clear GIFs or single-pixel GIFs. These images are placed on a web page or email and typically work in conjunction with cookies to collect data. We use these images to identify our users and user behavior, such as counting the number of users who have visited a web page or acted upon one of our email digests.

JD Supra Cookies. We place our own cookies on your computer to track certain information about you while you are using our Website and Services. For example, we place a session cookie on your computer each time you visit our Website. We use these cookies to allow you to log-in to your subscriber account. In addition, through these cookies we are able to collect information about how you use the Website, including what browser you may be using, your IP address, and the URL address you came from upon visiting our Website and the URL you next visit (even if those URLs are not on our Website). We also utilize email web beacons to monitor whether our emails are being delivered and read. We also use these tools to help deliver reader analytics to our authors to give them insight into their readership and help them to improve their content, so that it is most useful for our users.

Analytics/Performance Cookies. JD Supra also uses the following analytic tools to help us analyze the performance of our Website and Services as well as how visitors use our Website and Services:

Google Analytics - For more information on Google Analytics cookies, visit www.google.com/policies. To opt-out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites visit http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout. This will allow you to download and install a Google Analytics cookie-free web browser.

Facebook, Twitter and other Social Network Cookies. Our content pages allow you to share content appearing on our Website and Services to your social media accounts through the "Like," "Tweet," or similar buttons displayed on such pages. To accomplish this Service, we embed code that such third party social networks provide and that we do not control. These buttons know that you are logged in to your social network account and therefore such social networks could also know that you are viewing the JD Supra Website.

Controlling and Deleting Cookies

If you would like to change how a browser uses cookies, including blocking or deleting cookies from the JD Supra Website and Services you can do so by changing the settings in your web browser. To control cookies, most browsers allow you to either accept or reject all cookies, only accept certain types of cookies, or prompt you every time a site wishes to save a cookie. It's also easy to delete cookies that are already saved on your device by a browser.

The processes for controlling and deleting cookies vary depending on which browser you use. To find out how to do so with a particular browser, you can use your browser's "Help" function or alternatively, you can visit http://www.aboutcookies.org which explains, step-by-step, how to control and delete cookies in most browsers.

Updates to This Policy

We may update this cookie policy and our Privacy Policy from time-to-time, particularly as technology changes. You can always check this page for the latest version. We may also notify you of changes to our privacy policy by email.

Contacting JD Supra

If you have any questions about how we use cookies and other tracking technologies, please contact us at: privacy@jdsupra.com.

- hide

This website uses cookies to improve user experience, track anonymous site usage, store authorization tokens and permit sharing on social media networks. By continuing to browse this website you accept the use of cookies. Click here to read more about how we use cookies.